HBCU Summer

Our 2024 BRI Undergraduate Summer Research Poster Fair was on August 09, 2024.

The UCLA-HBCU Neuroscience Pathways program is an eight-week summer enrichment program for undergraduate students that attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States. The program is open to any undergraduate student who majors in natural science and is in good academic standing. The goals of the program are:

(1) to increase the impact on students and faculty at both HBCU partner institutions and UCLA,
(2) to incentivize quality mentorship of interns in our UCLA host labs.

A group of interested students, selected jointly by the HBCU partner institutions and UCLA, will be invited to spend 8 weeks at UCLA doing research in an appropriate host laboratory. The research will be commensurate with the experience at the HBCU partner institution. We will engage in active research and teaching partnerships that accompany students before and beyond the 8-week internship. Interns will be mentored and trained by the faculty members who run the respective labs. Additionally, we will host one “chaperone” HBCU faculty member per year to accompany the student for the first week of the program, which is intended to foster both scientific collaboration and quality mentoring. To incentivize graduate studies at UCLA for HBCU interns, the UCLA Brain Research Institute will offer a full 5-year stipend — dispersed annually — for at least one student accepted into the graduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program (gNSIDP). Furthermore, we will conduct outcome studies and publish them in a peer-reviewed journal. In short, we will take an innovative and holistic approach by providing not only a summer travel opportunity, but by following the student before and after their journey with us.

We will host a comprehensive research environment for the 2025 UCLA-HBCU Neuroscience Pathways summer research and enrichment program. We will take advantage of on-campus tools to engineer a robust and rewarding research experience. These research activities include, but are not limited to, analysis of data from ongoing experiments, modeling of biological or behavioral systems, computerized coding, and a variety of other analysis tools and methods that are available in the virtual environment. During the summer research experience, host labs will train Neuroscience Pathways fellows to conduct a rigorous research project. The research program will culminate in a poster competition. Apart from conducting research, students will also be involved in activities that will enrich their summer experience. These include: writing a research paper; exploring the M.D./Ph.D. career path; learning about applying to the Ph.D. program and funding opportunities; participating in research journal clubs, seminars, and career panels; preparing abstracts and posters; and visits to cultural centers in Los Angeles (e.g. California African American Museum, the California Science Center, or the Hammer Museum/Getty Center).

The requirements for acceptance into the program include:

• A major in natural sciences
• A minimum GPA of 3.0
• A letter of intent to apply for the program
• Academic transcript
• Personal statement (limit to 1000 words) that describes your past, present, or future leadership in and commitment to research and diversity in science
• Summary of prior research, if any (limit to 1000 words)
• Two letters of recommendation from science faculty (due February 12, 2025)
• Paragraph (500 words or less) summarizing your interest in neuroscience or physiology

In a separate file, applicants need to rank in order of preference, the top three research training areas: Neuroendocrinology, Sex Differences, and Reproduction; Neural Repair; Neural Microcircuits; Neurobehavioral Genetics; Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology; or Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology.

The program is run in conjunction with the BRI-SURE summer program:

• 8-week program (June 16 – August 09, 2025)
• Applications are due by January 22, 2025, at 11:59 pm PT. Please send all additional application materials to Ethan Snook at esnook@mednet.ucla.edu.
  • Use “UCLA-HBCU Neuroscience Pathways Application Materials – [Last Name, First Name]” in the subject line for tracking purposes.
• To learn more about this program, please contact Program Director Dr. Hakeem Lawal at hlawal@ucla.edu.

Please use this link to apply for the program.